UKRAINIAN LITERATURE
91.8%Chairman, Ukrainian Writers Union
100.0%CONTEMPORARY Ukrainian writers have inherited a proud literary tradition. In Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franco, Lymya Ukrainka, Mikhail Kotsyubinsky, Panas Mirny and Pavel Grabovsky, the Ukrainian people had a galaxy of impassioned writers, thinkers, fighters for liberation and heralds of the Revolution. They left behind them a literature infused with folk feeling, democratic ideals, sympathy for the oppressed and brotherhood for the Russian, Byelorussian and other peoples of the czarist empire.
99.0%Ukrainian writing today, grounded upon these same cherished traditions of humanism and internationalism, was the subject for discussion at a recent ten-day festival of the republic's art and literature held in Moscow. With writers present from Moscow, Leningrad, Gorky and from many national republics, the conference took on the character of a national authors' assembly. As many as 115 of the 300 authors who had prepared speeches took the floor to speak.
100.0%Critics and readers throughout the country have more than once had occasion to comment on the extraordinary development of Ukrainian prose. More than 400 new books of prose and poetry by native writers come off the republic's presses each year.
100.0%Translations into Russian and other languages of the USSR and into many foreign tongues have created a reading public for Ukrainian books far beyond the republic's boundaries. In the past year more than 190 books by 55 Ukrainian writers were published in 21 languages, including French, Japanese, Danish and Hindi.
100.0%Ukrainian writers have portrayed the life of the people in a series of epic novels. Witness such works as The Seething Ukraine by Peter Panch, Khmelnitsky by Ivan Le, Artyom Garmash by Andrei Golovko, the trilogy Yurko Kruk by Pyotr Kozlanyuk, and Blood Is Thicker Than Water and Bread and Salt, both by Mikhail Stelmakh.
99.1%The restless tempo of our turbulent times and its heroes are delineated in Vadim Sobko's novel Rest Is Only a Dream, in Pavel Zagrebelny's Heat and Alexander Sizonenko's Korabely. Collective farm people have been portrayed magnificently by Yuri Zhanatsky in his novel On the Eve of the Harvest.
99.7%Poets Andrei Malyshko, Leonid Pervomaisky, Ivan Vyrgan, Mikola Nagnibeda, Lyubomir Dmitersko, Platon Voronko and Stepan Oleinik have recorded today's Ukrainian history with vivid imagery and rich lyricism.
96.7%The Ukrainian language is powerful and beautiful. All of these writers have not only augmented the literary treasury of the Ukraine but that of the multinational Soviet Union as well.
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By Afrikan Balburov
95.9%Photos by Dmitri Chernov
81.2%Afrikan Balburov, Buryat writer, describes the past and present history of his people.
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